The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation will contest eight seats from Jharkhand in the general elections.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation will contest eight seats from Jharkhand in the general elections.

In this regard, party general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya announced the names of the candidates on Tuesday. The party will release its poll manifesto on March 23.

Bahadur Oraon will contest from Ranchi while Lalsai Bhagat has been made the candidate from Loharadaga. Ramnaresh Singh will contest from Chatra, Sushma Mehta from Palamu, Javed Islam from Hazaribagh, Rajkumar Yadav from Koderma, Bitiya Manjhi from Dumka and Geeta Mandal from Godda.

The party has decided to support Marxist Coordination Committee (MCC) candidate Anand Mahato from Dhanbad and CPM candidate from Rajmahal. The party is yet to decide on whom to extend support to in Giridih, Jamshedpur, Khunti and Singhbhum.

The party is confident about winning the Koderma seat from where Rajkumar Yadav will contest this time. Here Yadavs, Bhumihars and Kurmis decide the fate of candidates.

The party will contest in total 40-45 seats from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. The party will contest from 25 seats in Bihar alone. “Price rise, corruption and violation of land acquisition laws would be our prime agenda this time. In Jharkhand, we will raise the violations of CNT and SPT Acts and police torture will also be a major issue,” Bhattacharya added.

Bhattacharya termed the legislators, who are migrating to Trinamool Congress and other parties as cheaters. “The MLAs should resign from the party first before joining other parties. The voters had elected them when they had contested from our party. Not resigning from the old party before joining other parties is kind of cheating the voters,” he added.

Talking about BJP prime ministerial candidate, Bhattacharya said it would be a debacle if Modi were elected the prime minister. “Modi was the reason for the fall of the Vajpayee government in 2002. How could the people of the country elect him now?” he said.